Creating award-winning ‘dishes’ at Glenshee Pottery

A Glenshee tourist shop which features fresh, local produce on its tea room menu is celebrating after receiving its Taste Our Best Food and Drink Scheme award. 

Glenshee Pottery, which attracts around 12,000 visitors per year, was awarded the accreditation, which is a joint initiative between VisitScotland and the Scottish Government. Launched in 2013, Taste Our Best is designed to recognise businesses including hotels, restaurants, cafes, takeaways, visitor attractions and B&Bs that not only offer a quality food and drink experience, but include and promote Scottish produce on their menus, to give consumers choice. 

Glenshee Pottery is a family business located on the A93 tourist route and run by mother and daughter, Diana Alexander and Jennifer McNicol. Together, they make hand-thrown pottery using red and white earthenware clay and visitors can also paint their own pots. 

Both Diana and Jennifer love baking a wide variety of treats, including dairy-free scones and cakes and gluten-free brownies. To add variety to the scones, they offer cheese, date and walnut, portmary, syrup and honey, sunflower seed and ginger.

Diana Alexander said: “Wherever possible, we use either our own produce, or source local ingredients. For example, the eggs we use in our baking all come from our own flock of chickens; in season, we use rhubarb from our own garden, and all the raspberries, strawberries and blueberries we use in our baking come directly from the local berry farms, 12 miles away in Blairgowrie, which is known as the berry capital of Scotland.

“The honey in our scones comes from the family-run Heather Hills Honey Farm, just seven miles away, in Bridge of Cally. There, they collect and extract the honey using natural methods that ensure the enzymes, protein and natural goodness stay in the honey. The jam we serve with our scones and put into our cakes also comes from Heather Hills. Their award-winning Scottish preserves are extra fruit jams – all made with over 50% Scottish fruit from the local area and natural cane sugar. Our Scottish milk comes daily from the Bridge of Cally Post Office and General Store.”

Results from the 2011/12 Scotland Visitor Survey highlighted that the sampling of local produce is the second highest activity undertaken by visitors when they come to Scotland.

Diana added: “We are extremely pleased to have received the Taste our Best Award as we believe it highlights what wonderful produce is available locally. We believe in supporting other local businesses, wherever possible, and are lucky enough to have local producers just down the road from us, with others that we support being available locally. Our guests love knowing that our scones and baked goods are all homemade.” 

Philip Smith, VisitScotland Regional Director, said: “I would like to congratulate Diana and Jennifer on receiving this award, but it comes as no surprise, as the scope of locally-sourced food featured on their menu really is commendable.

“We know that visitors love authentic, quality Scottish food and drink and Taste Our Best is all about taking this knowledge to the next level and really encouraging the tourism industry and businesses to recognise the real benefits of sourcing, using and promoting local and Scottish produce. We have such a rich natural larder here in Perthshire, with some of the best products in the world right on our doorstep. 

“2015 is the Year of Scotland’s Food and Drink and we hope that all the visitors to our shores this year who are experiencing the range of truly global events across the country will also get to taste the best of Scotland.” 

Funded by the Scottish Government (£450K over three years) and VisitScotland (£470K in kind) with support from Scotland Food and Drink, the Taste Our Best initiative brings together the tourism and food and drink industries. 

Research has shown that visitors are willing to pay up to 15% more for food that is of Scottish or regional origin and businesses that provide local food can typically enjoy higher level sales of up to 20% per year. Visitors currently spend around £800 million per year on food and drink in Scotland and more than 70% of potential visitors to Scotland want to taste traditional dishes, regional specialities and fresh local produce.

The Taste Our Best scheme is the latest addition to VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance (QA) Schemes, which aim to drive up quality in tourism products across the country. Taste Our Best will provide businesses with an assessment of their food provision and their menu by qualified assessors, with those meeting the necessary criteria gaining the award. 

For accommodation providers and visitor attractions, the assessment will take place at the same time as the main VisitScotland Quality Assurance grading, meaning that many tourism businesses that already participate in the QA Scheme will no longer have to apply and pay for a separate food and drink assessment. 

Taste Our Best replaced the EatScotland food and drink QA scheme, which is being phased out.
Further details on Taste Our Best can be found at: www.visitscotland.org/quality-foodanddrink.aspx
More information on the Glenshee Pottery can be found at: www.glensheepottery.com